Boulder may be happy -- but is it as green as it wants to be?

Some types of national publicity are better than others. At around the same time Boulder was named the happiest city in the country in a Gallup-Healthways survey (apparently without taking into account the impact of weed), the city was being tweaked for its difficulty in meeting targeted environmental standards in an ultra-prominent Wall Street Journal story, accompanied by the video seen here. The piece ends with a quote attributed to regional sustainability coordinator Jonathan Koehn: "People say, 'It's Boulder! Kooky Boulder! Of course you can do it.' Not necessarily." This calls for more weed.

Michael Roberts has written for Westword since October 1990, serving stints as music editor and media columnist. He currently covers everything from breaking news and politics to sports and stories that defy categorization.